By Jim Bronstien, ABBRA

The Service Department track at the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo was designed to increase profits in any service department, and no service department can be successful without a strong service manager. That’s why we’ve developed two sessions for the 2010 MDCE (scheduled for Nov. 14-17 in Orlando, Fla.) that take a close look at what it means to be a marine service manager and offer tips for how to do that job more effectively.

During this second session, Jim Bronstien, a presenter for the American Boat Builders & Repairers Association will cover financial management for service managers. Topics will include an overview of basic accounting principles service managers must understand, budgeting for the service department, and fundamental parameters for estimating jobs and tracking estimates, and much more.

The session will explore understanding ways to evaluate profit and loss on jobs, how to determine markups, margins, and discounting; how to evaluate inventory, labor and materials costs and pricing; invoices and statements; payables and receivables; as well as practical ways to track your progress thru the month. This is not a software or accounting session, but a practical session for all service managers to attend.

To learn more about how to succeed as a service manager make plans to attend the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, to be held in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 14-17. With three concurrent educational tracks and more than 20 individual educational sessions, this event has been designed to help dealers return to the growth phase they knew prior to the economic downturn.

ABBRA’s “Financial Management” is a key session in MDCE’s Service Department track. It will be preceded by sessions focused on the successful service advisor, solving your most pressing service challenges, Web strategies to improve service department profits and another session for service managers, dedicated to operational excellence. It will be followed by a session on profitable, proactive service departments.

The Sales & Marketing track will be held concurrently and includes topics such as how to make more money by discounting less and charging more; high-impact, low-cost marketing tactics; the keys to succeeding as a 24/7 marine dealer; converting online leads into sales profits; immediate results using search engine marketing; and closing sales in a difficult economy.

While the Sales & Marketing track is perfect for sales managers and marketing managers and the service track will help strengthen any service manager or advisor, the newest, most exciting news for the 2010 MDCE is the addition of a third track, geared specifically toward dealer principals, titled Powering Profits. In this track, the educational topics will cover such pressing issues as pay plans, (re)building your culture, how to adopt best practices in your dealership, fact-driven dealer management and of course, myriad best practices to go with them. The event will also feature a general session and two keynote sessions, as well.

“We’ve covered all the bases with the education this year, making quality content, specific to service managers, sales managers, marketing managers and dealership principals alike, available in an unprecedented format,” explains Matt Gruhn, publisher of Boating Industry magazine, which partners with the Marine Retailers Association of America to produce the MDCE. “This will, without question, be the best line-up of education this event has ever produced.”